Kudos to the SL marketing team..

...for picking Penny Arcade's website as one of the places to put a banner ad.

Tens of thousands of gamer geeks hit that site every day... don't be surprised if there's a mild increase in new trials.

Incoming!

LF

I would be interested to know what the P-A guys think about SL. They seem like big gamers, and since SL isn't really a "game" that you "play" I wonder if they'd have the same "what's the point?" response that I get from a lot of my friends.

Holy shit. A P-A ad?

INCOMING!

What next, Megatokyo?

Slashdot!

"The message you have entered is too short.Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters." (gotta love these new forums)

Well, they've said many times that they only display ads for stuff that they personally like/approve of... maybe they play SL and just don't tell anyone?

LF

Oh well that's nifty

I read the comic but I guess I missed them mentioning that.

Beyond the familiar high-tech sources, I wonder what putting ads -- or even buzz copy, which has worked wonder for Kate Spade handbags -- in women's fashion magazines would do.

It'd have to be marketed on the slant that really, really appeals to the female essence. In other words, come in and get creative and make your own fashions, furniture, and be stylin'!

I do not think generic ads would bode well. I can also see targeted marketing pointed more actively towards subcultures like anime peeps, furries/anthromorphs, and techno raver-type people being very successful.

Emphasize: the journey is the adventure

I can see that some well-placed ads in Church Bulletins might go down well, emphasizing the daily 'Bingo' tournaments. For the elderly, housebound female, Second Life is perfect!

(Only half-joking...)

That's a really good idea. If more openminded Churches were to give out sermons on the possibilities of virtual reality and the Internet and encourage their congregation to flock to SL, we'd be onto something! There is that "virtual church" at http://www.shipoffools.com eh? It's offline now -- sadly they had waste their time with so much moderation of trolls -- but I can see how personal religion, faith, all that would play a role in cyberspace. And how we can hopefully get along.

I have already come across some God-Fearing Christians playing bingo, and elderly women who have great difficulty being ambulatory but are certainly up for a good chat and showing off their creations!

I AM SERIOUS WITH A SMILE.

That reminds me, wasn't there a few churches in SL at one point? I havent seen that SL banner ad before. I wish the ad focused more on the creative aspects of SL, like building, but that is a little harder to convey in an ad.

Ahhhh that's where the catchphrases come in, like "If you can prim it you can do it!" and an A/B split panel showing a destroyed typical RPG village surrounded by monsters on one side, and a bustling SL city on the other with happy citizens, with the word: "Procreate."

I did see a really nice church a week or so ago. I forget what it was called, but it was really nice. Had a good pulpit, nice pews, even fountains. Also, some of the gothic vampire designs have that architecture about them.

Ads asking questions or inducing curiosity would be an awesome way to get people interested in Second Life, I would think. Even an animated GIF (or Lord forbid, Flash... mu ha ha ha) showing a raw plywood-textured house in stages from beginning to completion.

It might be too much, but a YUGE graphic showing an ultradetailed view of a whole block of sims might be a powerful way to convey ideas like expansion and community.

Alternatively, a page showing thumbnails of a LOT of user-created SL objects arranged neatly in a mosaic grid, and this:



I'm also a fan of the basic punch, the group picture showing a few hundred of us: